I had the pleasure of meeting Rich Frishman at Fotofest last March; I not only enjoyed my time with the photographer, but immediately recognized his commitment to his craft. I featured his project American Splendor this past June, showcasing photographs that are constructed of between dozens and hundreds of images. I met up with Rich again at PhotoNOLA in December and was presented with a poignant and powerful new body of work, Ghosts of Segregation. I’m happy to share that this project went on to win the 2018 PhotoNOLA Review Award which results in a solo exhibition at the New Orleans Photo Alliance Gallery during the thirteenth annual PhotoNOLA festival in December, a cash award of $1000, and a complimentary year of mentoring and strategic marketing consultations from Mary Virginia Swanson.

When photographer Elliot Ross and I traveled the 2,000 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border it was the spring of 2017. The post-election climate had enflamed a sense of cultural and political difference in the United States — much of which centered around the debate about the border wall. We set out expecting to find residents there who were fundamentally vexed by the relationship between the United States and Mexico; between immigrant, indigenous and Caucasian communities; and between border inhabitants and undocumented migrants. Instead, we found the opposite — and heard about fears largely left unvoiced.

Artist Brenda Ann Kenneally knows how the game is played better than most, and uses her knowledge and wisdom expose the truth — rather than perpetuate the lies told and sold. In 2002, she and author Adrian Nicole LeBlanc began collaborating on a magazine assignment in Troy, New York, a once-thriving city whose fortunes have gone dark.

For almost half a century, the British photographer has captured the diversity and eccentricity of the city of Manchester in northwestern England.

On this day of professing love, I am extending my love to those who make this site what it is…the behind the scenes people like Jonas Yip and Brian Van de Wetering who solve all the glitches and Clay Lipsky who can turn around a design with record speed, the active daily promoters of the site: Val Patterson, Julia Bennett, Patty Lemke, and Paula Riff, the wonderful writers and editors: Linda Alterwitz, Daniel George, Amanda Dalgren, Megan Ross, Brennan Booker, and The States Project Editors…well, and so many more….and I don’t want to forget two people that were so critical to the site, Grant Gill and Sarah Stankey who are off at grad school making waves in the photo world. I love you and thank you and wish you the most wonderful Valentine’s Day!

The sitters who moved in and out of Hugh Mangum’s view between 1897 and 1922 smiled, laughed, and daydreamed; they threw their arms around or leaned upon one another; they wore their best dresses and fanciest hats, or they wore coarse cloth and stood barefoot. In an era of racial terror, as Jim Crow tightened its grip on the South, Mangum set up makeshift studios across North Carolina and Virginia (sometimes just a tent outside of town) that were open to white and black sitters alike. A gangly white man with an appealingly unkempt mustache, Mangum often used a Penny Picture camera, designed to capture up to thirty exposures on a single glass plate. Sitters would line up and take their places in front of the camera; Mangum would charm and cajole them, shifting the plate a little bit for each new exposure. The result, inadvertent but still provocative, is a record of how much daily life and experience was shared by the people whom racist American custom and law treated as separate.

Wesaam Al-Badry’s first and fondest memory of his father, Sattar, was visiting him in an Iraqi prison. Sattar had been imprisoned and tortured for being a pacifist who refused to fight in the Iran-Iraq war. There were at least 20 other prisoners in the same cell, Wesaam recalled where his father hugged him and held him in his lap.

Farshad Usyan followed in his late brother’s footsteps as a photographer for Agence France-Presse. In his personal work, he focuses on the mundane struggles and simple pleasures in his homeland.

Los Angeles photographer Thomas Alleman has a legacy of looking at Los Angeles with the unique perspective of a visual hunter. As he traverses the city on foot or by car, his projects reflect the visual connections to it’s history of Noir and movie making, but he also investigates the ubiquitous visual assaults of advertising, architecture, and the land itself. His new series, Living On The Land In Los Angeles, FLORA, explores the idea that we live in a false environment with landscape that is non-native, filled with species that are invasive and damaging resulting in a terrain that has a mind of it’s own. His compositions and use of flash present an off-kilter, mess of a marriage of flora, architecture, and humanity.

The Chinese photographer Ying Yin initially boarded the ‘Wind of Okhotsk’ train in Hokkaido, Japan in hopes of seeing the the famous drift ice over the Sea of Okhotsk. Her first attempt, however, was cut short by bad weather, leading her to pursue a different subject. Following the general course of the train, she made visits to snowy cities, where she observed solitary figures going about their daily lives.